Overview

Person to Person is a popular television program in the United States that originally ran from 1953 to 1961. Edward R. Murrow hosted it until 1959, interviewing celebrities in their homes from a comfortable chair in his New York studio. In the last two years of its original run, the host was Charles Collingwood. Although Murrow is best remembered as a reporter on programs such as Hear It Now and See It Now and for publicly confronting Senator Joseph McCarthy, on Person to Person he was a pioneer of the celebrity interview. The program was well planned but not strictly scripted, with as many as six cameras and TV lighting installed to cover the guest's moves through his home, and a microwave link to transmit the signals back to the network. The guests wore wireless microphones to pick up their voices as they moved around the home or its grounds. The interviews were done live. The two 15-minute interviews in each program were typically with very different types of people, such as a movie star and a scientist. Guests often used the appearance to promote their latest project or book.